Love at a Reasonable Price

Too lazy even to drink
too bored even to bitch
too done even to remember
what he’d meant to make.

No one cares.
Nobody minds.
He leaves them alone.
It is kind of fun to get big eyes
and lean into a friend, all soft
with concern for the poor guy.

One more day here and there
I’ve quit believing in you
in what you said
It isn’t for me to say
but everybody knows
you’re done
a has been has at least
something to look back upon
something to smile distantly
about when what was’s raised

He’s always been a funny guy,
flips up the collar of his pea coat
tidies the flip-up of navy woolen cap
struts like a rooster with forward-pursed beak
gonna turn the world upside down.

There he goes, hands in woolen pockets,
peacocking like he’s moving to 70s funky rock
instead of the clank of heavy chain, the whirr
of spinning crane and the smirking shouts
of dockers.

Take him back, sweet sea, sweep him back out into your rough hewn heart.
Take him back, let him wobble his head and glitter movie star eyes
while harmlessly floating far from society.

Author: BW
Copyright: AMW

Sinister friends,
laughing sneerers with wooden hearts,
counting money at a wobbly card table
in a dank dirt-floored cellar
where a single bulb hangs overhead
from a long and fraying wire.

My dirty friends,
screwing as a job
drinking as a cause
smoking on the job
bored with their hair,
how to change,
really change
my look?

My stupid friends,
chortling and grabbing
after waitresses and in parking lots
proud to fail and just
take it easy man

A man without friends is a man looking
he’s a man on the prowl
a man with a mission
anything to end this loneliness
anything to meet my needs
as a social animal.
You know?

Author: BW
Copyright: AMW

Watching water from my perch sitting on the sky bringing the ladle to my lips and you cannot hear my screams down there down inside the terrarium where the pigeons fight for crumbs in the town square.

Drinking from a paper cup. Drinking water I stole from the board of elections table when the old woman in the carpet-bag sweater turned, with an open smile of delighted surprise (a clever joke from a real fire cracker) and holding the rims of her swooping batwing glasses, to her neighbor.

I live her inside this dark room. I pace the floors wet slate floors in bare feet. Cold and wet and squishy with a plop plop smack sound all day long, hands behind back, stupid head down, trying to pretend to try to think. So lame. Someone come help me! Someone lower a love crane and pull me up out of here. Someone someone out there, get the floodlights off and come to the small hole in the ground 100 feet above my head. I can’t see you–especially as your head obscures my only source of light. Call down to me; tell me you believe in

We don’t know who can stop the waste of life and love.

Did I think to mention
that I’m quitting
everything?

Did I remember to say
that I’ve given up
once and for all?

Sleep through work
and watch 80s videos
on YouTube,
drinking a mineral
water
or yesterday’s beer.

Did I tell you that I cannot
stand another day of this?

But what is the problem?
And where is someone who cares?

I live alone
I want to go home
I want to get out of this
I want this to stop
I want to stop wasting life
but I do not know how
I want the pressure off
and the noise to quit.

Loud bored old pointless
hurt in the pit and spread
up and down and all through,
even narrowing my face
by pushing the spot
between my two eyes
in,
so my faces collapses
upon itself.

No one to talk to.
Keep talking to myself
No one to turn to.
Keep calling to myself

Bored, lonely, unable to face the task
any real task
shuffling papers
and waiting life out
Not good
how to stop
this?

I saw you walking down the long,
the many-pausing stairs
while I was walking up them.
You saw me and you quivered
–unless I overstate–
within your naked lines.
I saw you and I wanted
to somehow cross the distance.

And now by chance unglimpsed
you sit here in this room
where I too lonesome sit down
but at a separate cubby spot
on a table three rows above.

You are so fair and soft
so full in youth’s best stance.
A man is made for longing strong
at breasts and thighs and spots
too sacred for the coarseness of words.

A man is just a much-tossed branch
upon capricious ocean’s roar.
I want a deeper sounding down
into a firmer home.
But with you and me and desire
still intact and bouncing free.

Goodbye. We’ll never meet
since I can’t see me floating up
above the linoleum floors
and finding words and looks
that make a hello good.

I loved you with the pitter patter
of another unknown daydream
that erupted violently
because
because
just because
I’m a person.

AMW

In time enough the ferryman’s pulling arm
Will beach his bent-bowed bark upon the sands
Of yonder dark-masked land, and wave his hand–
White-washed bone that flies a nightsilk shroud.

So cross must I–and useless being cross–
The sleepy rippling satin flood between
Youth’s scattered hopes and the final result:
An all-encircling, all enclosing web
Which I as child to corpse have spun myself
From these first golden threads.

[AMW on October 22, 2016, 6:26pm, Tea And Poetry in DUMBO]

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

Look on yonder craggy Christ
arms up and bleeding upon the cross
with waning day twinkling through
and flanked by two thieves
the one repentant the other silent–
perhaps thoughtful, perhaps asleep.

Look up towards skinny little
begger dirty ‘neath hasty wreath
of knotted thorns that cut
and trace out a glaring path
atop the holy head.

Listen for the rustle of the
moving robes and the sobs
of a stray friend or two:
“Father forgive them,
they know not what they do.”
“Father, my father,
why have you forsaken me?”

Listen for the Truth
in the agony bent through
the common sweltering pain
the leather sandals
grit lining the souls
momma bawls to watch
baby boy die twisted
and broken way up
against the disappearing day
on a cross next to
some false prophet.

Who woke Jesus up?
Who said,
“Boy, get on up!
You ain’t done yet!
Get your sorry skinny
ass out there
try again!”

And what could Jesus,
fresh from the horrors
of flailed flesh
human abandonment
God’s silence
and the devil’s
chores criss-crossing
infinite caverns
trodding ruthlessly
on failed souls–
spiritual losers
who maybe yes maybe no
amounted to something
on the salty sands
but down here just reek
and writhe in loserness,
what could Jesus then think,
feel, do, as the coach
lovepatted him back into the sunlight.

No I can’t guess,
no I can’t accept,
no I can’t dare,
no I can’t see
what kind of a world we’ve built between the lot of us.

When the questions of midnight’s skirt,
waiting there,
parted soft and ready
a warm mossy nook
where the young boy
rests his soft-hair.

When the chances run dry
like a springtime creek
in the sandy Arizona
mountainlands
beneath spruce
within that sharp
drifting scent.

When I learn
that I’ve been wrong
all along right along
and now I know and yet
can alter zip,
amend nought,
save nothing
from the pointless
feckless, wreckless,
tossing, turning,
licking, splitting
flames.

Where is God?
Where is Jesus?
Where is the Buddha?
Where is the strength
that knows how to help?

I’m so sorry
said the hand that fell
to his dark-robed side,
floating a half-read note
upon brown and white marble.

I’m so sorry
said the scuzzy dewed eyes
beneath flopsy felt-brimmed hat,
wandered out and caught out
in the dustblown, scratchy blanket
cowboy posture.

I’m so hurt by what I’ve become
said the blood on his hands
in the water on the thick piney needles
in the yellow orange purple blue black
sliding sun against the edge
where mountains cut.

I’m so let down by who I’ve
found within my life,
so disappointed by the one
that I’ve ended up being
too late
and where is the beauty
that had once seemed
so close and certain sure?

Come back please,
someone who speaks and listens
someone who holds and believes
someone who I know enough
to care about.

Come back please,
whatever would make this OK.

And what can I say to you?
When playful cards spill onto the ground
and the rickety green table cartwheels apart?

And where can we go?
When the boredom and loneliness
catch us both turning cold,
growing old, indifferent, emptied
of the holy fire
that had once lit the way.

Hey, hey, hey,
what is this I feel?
Not another place to shelter:
the evaporation of all shelter.
Not a brighter perspective:
the silence gathering round
and plunging in like dracula
in his cape.

This death
searing through my ideas,
tiring out my promise,
pitting me against my strength,
knotting my letterman sweater
casually flung over my broad young shoulders.

Hey hey hey
so sorry for this for us for some mistake
I can’t locate or dissolve
for something evil within the broth.